Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reportedly went Hollywood Thursday night, PoliticusUSA has been told by an inside tipster. The Virginia Republican attended a dinner last night hosted by Bobby Kotick, billionaire Activision founder/CEO, for an impressive guest list including Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Josh and Beth Friedman, and Jeff Skoll among others.
This is awkward because Cantor is known as the “family values” guy in the House. He used to push the Über conservative issues in the House, but lately he’s busy moving to the middle for his personal career. To that end, he’s also busy rebranding the GOP as the party that cares. They care about families, women and children, in spite of their policies to the contrary. How can you tell they care? Because of the language they use to label their policies that are bad for moms, dads and families.
Currently, Cantor is pushing his colleague’s “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013” as part of the GOP’s “Make Life Work” propaganda. The bill sounds great when you hear him sell it, it will let Americans “participate in the lives of their children.” The sweet talk continued, “All too often working parents find there just isn’t enough time at home with their kids. Too many parents have to weigh whether they can afford to miss work even for half a day to see their child off on the first day of school or attend a parent-teacher conference .”
But of course, this is the Republican Party so beware of Trojan Horses. Eileen Appelbaum, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, explained how this bill benefits employers over employees for the Huffington Post:
The flexibility in this comp time bill would have employees working unpaid overtime hours beyond the 40-hour workweek and accruing as many as 160 hours of compensatory time. A low-paid worker making $10 an hour who accrued that much comp time in lieu of overtime pay would effectively give his or her employer an interest-free loan of $1,600 — equal to a month’s pay. That’s a lot to ask of a worker making about $20,000 a year.
Indeed, any worker who accrues 160 hours of comp time will in effect have loaned his or her employer a month’s pay. This same arithmetic provides employers with a powerful incentive to increase workers’ overtime hours. Instead of having to pay time-and-a-half wages when an hourly-paid employee works longer than the standard 40-hour work week, the employer incurs no financial cost at the time the extra hours are worked.”
Aw, way to trick those “moms”; aka, women voters! (not).
While he tries to sell himself as the new hero to American Moms, Cantor’s actions belie a conservative image steeped in Southern tea hostilities toward hipster Hollywood liberals (just being from Hollywood was enough to smear Ashley Judd in tea party minds). In truth, Cantor, who’s eyeing up a larger role for himself – maybe Boehner’s Speakership – is actively seeking Hollywood glitz and money.
In April, he posed with Brad Pitt and proudly tweeted the pic of he and his wife with a real. live. moviestar. OMG!
Cantor tweeted, “At Horatio Alger Association dinner with my wife Diana and Brad Pitt. Celebrating pursuit of the American dream. pic.twitter.com/kiyM1AXkiS”
Republicans are used to empty chairs and washed up has-beens, so Brad Pitt was a real get even if it was just a quick pose.
Thursday’s dinner was hardly Cantor’s first dip into the Hollywood pool. In 2011, he found success by going Hollywood. “House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has made a play for financial and policy support in Hollywood, tapping into a network of conservatives and finding quiet success.”
The next time a Republican sneers about the Hollywood elite, tell them to stop picking on Eric Cantor. He’s very busy trying to destroy American families.
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